Free will evidence

Free will evidence

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1372-free-will-evidence

Navigating the Crossroads of Free Will and Divine Judgment

If free will doesn't exist, then my decisions are dictated by an external force, absolving me of responsibility. Consequently, it would be unjust to penalize me for any misdeeds, as the controlling entity should bear the responsibility. This notion casts a shadow of injustice over the New Testament, particularly the teachings of Jesus about Judgment Day, where individuals are assessed based on their faith and actions. Hence, either the premise is accurate rendering the New Testament unjust, or it's incorrect, reinstating my "self" as the rightful decision-maker accountable for my actions. I go with the latter interpretation.



The Argument from Free Will
1. Having free will means having the freedom to choose our actions, rather than having them determined by some prior cause.
2. If we don’t have free will, then we are not agents, for then we are not really acting, but, rather, we’re being acted upon. (That’s why we don’t punish people for involuntary actions—such as a teller who hands money to a bank robber at gunpoint, or a driver who injures a pedestrian after a defective tire blows out.)
3. To be a moral agent means to be held morally responsible for what one does.
4. If we can’t be held morally responsible for anything we do, then the very idea of morality is meaningless.
5. Morality is not meaningless.
6. We have free will.
7. We, as moral agents, are not subject to the laws of nature—in particular, the neural events in a genetically and environmentally determined brain.
8. Only a being who is apart from the laws of nature and partakes of the moral sphere could explain our being moral agents.
9. Only God is a being who is apart from the laws of nature and partakes of the moral sphere.
10. Only God can explain our moral agency.
11. God exists.


If free will does not exist,  then everything would be pre-determined, and my actions are all pre-determined by physical necessity, and there could not be a different history of our universe than exactly the one that is. Lets say i throw a peace of paper. I just decided to throw that piece of paper on the floor. I don’t believe that that was determined at the start of the big bang.I think it’s ludicrous to imagine that the entire development of the universe, including, say, this writing, was predetermined. I assume that some of my actions are not given by predetermined functions of the past history of the universe.What about those big decisions in which we actually do feel unsure, have trouble choosing between two or more partially if not equally attractive options, and utimately pick one and act on it? It seems to me these are decisions made upon free will.

An educated atheist teaches since all is matter, and free will is not matter, then ergo free will does not exist. Therefore atheists have no choice but to be atheists and theists have no choice but to be theists. Since this the logical conclusion of an athesistic position, for them to argue theists should not be theists is not logical.


http://www.creationhistory.com/CreationMessages/The_Brain_and_the_Bible.shtml

The mystery of how information is "coded." Scientists can SEE the human brain, can MEASURE electrical pulses traveling within the brain, etc., but how can this explain our thoughts? The article goes on to draw this comparison:

"The challenge is something like popping the cover off a computer, measuring a few transistors chattering between high and low voltage, and trying to guess the content of the Web page being surfed."

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/mathematician-says-hes-proven-free-will/

Mathematician says he’s proven free will

Matthew Cobb called my attention to an interview with John Horton Conway in Notices of the American Mathematical Society. Conway is a famous mathematician at Princeton who says he’s proven that free will exists.

I haven’t seen his formal treatment of the Free Will Theorem, so I can’t say I can evaluate it—much less understand it. From the interview it sounds simply like a refutation of pure physical determinism, which most of us who accept quantum mechanics don’t see as problematic. The question is whether our behaviors and “choices” can be influenced by quantum dynamics, but even if that were true it wouldn’t prove “free will” exists in any meaningful sense.  But the proof of “free will” is also connected with the bizarre phenomenon of quantum entanglement.

Talking to interviewer Dierk Schleicher, Conway explains his proof:

   My friend Simon Kochen taught me one thing about quantum mechanics which I understood, and I find that many physicists don’t understand that one thing (of course, they understand many things that I don’t). And that one thing we were able to pursue until we had this great theorem. If we make reasonable assumptions, including the assumption of free will, this one thing tells us that the little elementary particles are doing their own thing all over the universe. One atom is deciding to move a little bit leftwards and another to move a little bit rightwards. And it all very nearly cancels out, but not quite. And here [points to Schleicher] is what we call a life. You might be a robot, but I doubt it. I rather suspect you to have the same kind of consciousness as I have. And that is probably a manifestation of the freedom of the particles inside you: they do their own thing.

    . . . Schleicher: Could you make a simple statement about what exactly, or intuitively, the Free Will Theorem says?

   Conway: Yes. [Throws a piece of paper.] I just decided to throw that piece of paper on the floor. I don’t believe that that was determined at the start of the big bang, 14 billion years ago. I think it’s ludicrous to imagine that the entire development of the universe, including, say, this interview, was predetermined.For the Free Will Theorem, I assume that some of my actions are not given by predetermined functions of the past history of the universe. A rather big assumption to make, but most of us clearly make it. Now, what Simon and I proved is, if that is indeed true, then the same is true for elementary particles: some of their actions are not predetermined by the entire past history
   of the universe. That is a rather remarkable thing.

   Newton’s theory was deterministic. In the 1920s, Einstein had difficulties believing that quantum mechanics was not deterministic. That was regarded as a defect of quantum mechanics. Certainly when I tried to learn quantum mechanics and didn’t succeed, I thought it was a defect. It’s not a defect. If the theory could predict what one of those particles could do, then that theory would be wrong, because, according to the Free Will Theorem—supposing we do have free will—a particle doesn’t make up its mind what it’s going to do until it does it or until shortly before it does it.

   Let me describe the theorem this way. Suppose there is only a very tiny amount of free will in humans: you can press either button A or button B in a manner that is not predetermined. That is a very tiny part of what we normally consider free will for humans. And if we have that tiny amount of free will, so do the elementary particles, in a sense that a particle in response to some experiment can choose which path, C or D, that it follows. It has free action. It chooses C or D in a manner that is not a predetermined function of all the information in the past history of the universe.

   Schleicher: You believe that humans have free will.
   Conway: I do. Strict determinism tells us that all of our actions are predetermined by the past history of the universe. I don’t know, maybe it is. I can’t disprove it. I can prove that I can’t disprove it. I can prove that you [points to Schleicher] can’t disprove it either. But I believe anyway that humans have free will.

It seems, then, that  because particles have free will (i.e., purely indeterminate behavior, for they certainly don’t have minds), we must too. But what makes me think that I don’t understand Conway’s proof of free will comes from the way it’s characterized in, say, Wikipedia:

   The free will theorem of John H. Conway and Simon B. Kochen states that, if we have a certain amount of “free will”, then, subject to certain assumptions, so must some elementary particles. Conway and Kochen’s paper was published in Foundations of Physics in 2006. . .
   Axioms

   The proof of the theorem relies on three axioms, which Conway and Kochen call “fin”, “spin”, and “twin”. The spin and twin axioms can be verified experimentally.

       Fin: There is a maximum speed for propagation of information (not necessarily the speed of light). This assumption rests upon causality.
       Spin: The squared spin component of certain elementary particles of spin one, taken in three orthogonal directions, will be a permutation of (1,1,0).
       Twin: It is possible to “entangle” two elementary particles, and separate them by a significant distance, so that they have the same squared spin results if measured in parallel directions. This is a consequence of (but more limited than) quantum entanglement.

   In their later paper, “The Strong Free Will Theorem,” Conway and Kochen weaken the Fin axiom (thereby strengthening the theorem) to a new axiom called Min, which asserts only that two experimenters separated in a space-like way can make choices of measurements independently of each other. In particular, they are not asserting that all information must travel finitely fast; only the particular information about choices of measurements.
   The theorem

   The theorem states that, given the axioms, if the two experimenters in question are free to make choices about what measurements to take, then the results of the measurements cannot be determined by anything previous to the experiments. Since the theorem applies to any arbitrary physical theory consistent with the axioms, it would not even be possible to place the information into the universe’s past in an ad hoc way. The argument proceeds from the Kochen-Specker theorem, which shows that the result of any individual measurement of spin was not fixed independently of the choice of measurements.

My view that this is all about determinism, and not really “free will” in the only meaningful sense it can be taken in such a context—that is, dualistic or libertarian free will of the human mind—is buttressed by a critical assessment, also on Wikipedia:

   Conway and Kochen do not prove that free will does exist. The definition of “free will” used in the proof of this theorem is simply that an outcome is “not determined” by prior conditions, and some philosophers strongly dispute the equivalence of “not determined” with free will. Some critics argue that the theorem only applies to deterministic models.Others have argued that the indeterminism that Conway and Kochen claim to have established was already assumed in the premises of their proof.

I warmly invite philosophers, mathematicians, physicists, or anyone who thinks they really understand the Free Will Theorem to explain it in the comments, but be aware that this will certainly be a very hard thing to do. I’m looking for clarity here—not just for readers, but for myself. In the end, I can’t believe that quantum mechanics can prove that we have libertarian free will.  And if we’re compatibilists and believe in a kind of free will that isn’t libertarian or dualistic, then we don’t need quantum mechanics or mathematics to show it.

Tony Ingalise Do you want to know a big reason why an atheist claiming there is no free will is a major contradiction? Because if there is no free will, then why exactly do atheists willfully seek out debate on God as if they will actually be responsible for changing someones mind into an atheist. In other words, as a Christian theist who accepts free will, I believe that my discussions with others and sharing of knowledge can actually lead to them changing their minds and becoming a Christian. I believe I can directly and willfully choose to help guide another to God.

On the other hand, as an atheist who rejects free will, you believe that absolutely everything about you, and everyone else, was predetermined and is beyond your ability to change or even effect. If this is so, then you, or any other atheist, are in fact arguing and debating for literally no direct reason whatsoever. You are only debating in this group because it was predetermined and your beliefs will never actually change due to truth and evidence because truth and evidence cannot predetermine your choices anymore than you can based on your logic.


Furthermore, Sam Harris, as well as many other atheists such as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, have attempted to argue that, as an atheist even though they believe that when you die you are gone forever (your memories, relationships, thoughts, everything you have ever done, which would mean a pointless existence) "it does not mean that life has no meaning", as they say. The irony here is that, accoeding to the logic you propose presented by Harris, on top of the fact that atheism -if true- would mean everything you have ever thought, said or done will be completely wiped out when you die, but if Harris' claim that free will also does not exist and is only a delusion.... well then life truly would be unavoidably pointless and meaningless if this were all true. With absolutely no free will, you already have a loss of meaning towards life because you did not choose a single thing you ever thought or did in life. But if you add on the conclusion of life according to atheism (once again, when you die "there is absolutely nothing and your entire lifes existence are gone forever as if they were never there to begin with) with the claim that there is also no free will, then not only would it be like you never existed to begin with when you die, but even during your existence there is no meaning because you chose nothing in your entire life, and then your entire life of never having a true choice in a single thing is erased for eternity without a trace.


Sorry if that was in anyway hard to follow. It's clear to me that you don't fully understand or realize just how complicated these concepts are.

Debating Determinism with Dillahunty
http://freethinkingministries.com/debating-determinism-with-dillahunty/?fbclid=IwAR2QRY39yU-FrYoCJEko7Kd5Kr7dN0dOjy_GE7v1LIrPc58zB6bzYT1xTPI

Simple modal fallacy. Knowledge isn't causal. God knows what you will do. He knows it because that's what you will do. You don't do it because he knows it.

one necessary foundation of atheism (either the lack-of-belief kind or the definitely-believe-not kind) is Physicalism: the self-refuting idea that everything in existence is physical.
self-refuting?
the idea exists, and is not physical. as do the rules of logic (universal, unchanging, not physical).
Physicalism entails Determinism, the idea that every event is completely determined by the preceding circumstances.
under that dogma, thinking as such does not happen: an arrangement of neuron states fell into place as a consequence of preceding circumstances — and so on, back to whatever the starting point was.
in that context, the claim “I think I am Atheist” is an oxymoron.
in the absence of thinking, therefore the absence of planning or of will, and in the self-evident presence of change, another dogma is entailed: Accidentalism, to wit, that some things happen without any cause.
if you follow that chain back to the sources, Determinism plus Accidentalism means that a typical Atheist is unwittingly expressing faith in Fortuna/Tyche, the Roman/Greek idol of luck.
at this point, the devout Atheist requires a source of randomness in a deterministic universe comprised entirely of physical entities, and their fairy tail begins to get extremely discordant and complex.
in Astrophysics, the fairy tale necessarily includes Dark Energy and Dark Matter (neither of which are actually necessary, as the dominant force in our universe is ✶not✶ gravity, and Special Relativity — with or without fudge factor — is fatally flawed) — which conveniently cannot be directly observed — in order to produce a non-existent universal expansion need to make gigayears more plausible within which Fortuna can do her work.
one other major Atheist auto-de-fé is the belief that randomness is creative.
if you re-title ‘randomness’ as ‘entropy’ that suddenly seems much less plausible and a social burning at the stake for heresy (“any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs, customs, etc.”) becomes much more likely.